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Thursday, 28 November 2013

Fresh out of limbo

Curiously, I have defensively barricaded myself in limbo this last month whilst going through an intense job selection process. With the potential to sleep every night teasing me from a remote corner yet again and the possibility of easier financial times and a more reliable much needed structure to our weeks, I have felt almost sick waiting to find out. But all good things as they say .... and here I am now, feeling all unlocked and hugely relieved, mama got a normal job! As I have grown to expect on this trip there are new complexities I haven't had to consider for a while like wrap around childcare, transport in the dark winter months and how I get everything else done with even less time in the nest than before! But it's a trade off, you can't keep all the balls in the air all of the time (well I can't) these are just the ones I'm compromising for this next particular phase of my life.

Being a soft git I sobbed with relief for about half an hour after I got the news then felt a subtle shift; stood up a little taller, breathed a little deeper, let my shoulders drop and remembered how it all came about, the universe had this set up every step of the way and for once I have aligned. Just the thought of the good this change will bring has seen me morph back into a more happy present mama.

Naturally I have been through the whole 'am I selling out on all my holistic parenting values?' thang but I decided that on balance the imps have had a lot of my time since they were born, those formative years of theirs have been well covered. In my mind things were always meant to get easier once they were both at school and so there is no point me beating about the bushes and not grabbing this opportunity and giving it the chance to evolve. Simply a new way of balancing the scales out. Did I mention I only have to work 3 out of the 13 weeks of school holidays in a year - making full time hours during term time immeasurably more palatable. And, as a little nod to me from whatever energy is rooting for me here, the office I will be working in is based two minutes from my favourite woodland, you see.

SO my imps, what have they been up to aside from bickering, squabbling and generally driving me insane? Well they have been super cute too, good job really - lots of yoga has been happening ... look at these textbook asanas!

Lots of writing. Gaia is incredible, her mind is so quickly engaging with what she is learning at school. She independentlypractises her writing and numbers at home in every spare minute she isn't asleep. At parents evening her teachers said she just doesn't stop, all day she is whirling from one activity to another. Unsurprisingly she is a tired neurotic mess by the end of the day, but I'm trying to give her little anchors of security in new bed time rituals like choosing her pjamas together and tidying her room whilst she gets into them, lots of cups of herbal tea (they are now both total tea heads like their mama!) and never failing to read a bedtime story.

Space. The final frontier. The origins of the universe. That's what is happening for Zander at the moment and I'm finding it rather contagious! Programmes likes How The Universe Works, Horizon and Through the Wormhole are firm favourites, some nights he'd rather forgo a bedtime story to watch them and I totally get that. When I was about 8 suddenly it was all about space for me too. I buried myself in my dads complex astronomy books despite struggling to decipher the scientific terminologies and endless diagrams of the night sky. I immersed myself in science at school and could be heard declaring quite genuinely that I wanted to dream big and be an Astronaut ... more space cadet than astronaut it turns out. I think it is the first time I have ever understood Zander in an unspoken way - without giving myself brain ache trying to figure him out. And I need these opportunities to see similarities and find understanding with simplicity, fostering connections happens organically then. We are both hoping that Comet Ison makes it round the sun and back past Earth again at the end of December so that we can go comet watching together. See, when something sparks a flame within him like this there are always posters and fact sheets a plenty to follow from his industrious creative side. He drew the most beautiful picture of the spherical solar system including the mysterious Oort cloud on the outer edge, he labelled tragectories for all the planets and has seemingly fallen under the spell of the Gas Giants, drawn to Saturn and Jupiter. And it was just the other week he wrote and illustrated a detailed little book on the subject of the Giant Impact Hypothesis - Thiea, Earth and the Moon. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing my children engaged so intensely in the things that interest them, to me this is their real education, this is the garden where their minds grow exponentially.

Nature is our playground still too - we are all much better behaved outside even when it is colder and Autumn has delivered this year, cast her magic spell well and truly upon us ...

Is that not the Brambley Hedge Store-Stump? We thought so.

little wonders ...

what could be more fun than jumping about in a stream in autumn?

for me? kickin' up those leaves of life of course! Nothing like that sound of dry crunchy leaves thick underfoot - it's a shortcut straight back to childhood.

collecting dam making material ...

finding noisy critters whilst we climb trees together ....

I'm always the first in the tree. I missed out on tree climbing when I was small so I am making up for it now.

Impromptu woodland rendezvous with friends and those curls - be.still.my.heart.

My mushroom obsession. I'm perpetually amazed and enchanted by them, they exude the ethereal. We have all of us heard they are left wherever the faerie folk gather - a footprint, a trace of otherworldly energies and in a spellbinding sort of a way I could altogether loose track of time wondering at their structural beauty and delicacy. The imps want to get an identification book and I would like to find someone with mushroom wisdom who can show me which ones we can forge and eat. They have this incredible iridescence even in these pictures look ....

The wheel is evidently in motion within and without. It turns perpetually, shedding old things and manifesting the new. Our challenge is to synchronise with this forward motion and the blessing of low, shadow stretching autumn sun is lighting the way.

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About Me

I am a nature loving mama blessed with two wee wildlings living in East Anglia, old land of the Iceni, in England.
I am a weaver of words, stitcher of stories and curious of thoughts. I write experientially, when it flows and needed a space to collate these things for myself and for friends. So here we are. Brew up a tea and make sure it’s a big slice of cake you have there before you sit down and read. Enjoy X